Saturday, 30 August 2014

Robin Ripley author of Wisdom for Home Preserves has developed a "go to" book for those who love to make home preserves. Now, I have made the occasional strawberry or fruit jam and onion chutney but I have discovered preserves are much more than this. Preserving food is nothing new, in fact it goes back to 12,000 BC, presumably to store foods. Most of our grandmother's generation preserved foods for insurance, as there were no 24 hour supermarkets like today and there would be guarantees that a large amount of food would be available. These days, (or in my case) preserves for a wonderful accompaniment to dishes. This book offers a comprehensive guidance on to store a wide range of ingredients 500 tips for pickling, bottling, curing, smoking and more. The whole emphasis on this book is sharing tips that are needed so we can become kings and queens of home preserving; here are my top favourite tips from this book as featured in the book. Tip 3 Understand why foods spoil, Tip 9 Prepare what you have and what you love, Tip 27 Regularly inspect and rotate stored food, Select a pressure cooker with the newer safety features and Tip 96 Let jars rest for 24 hours.

There are 8 chapters in this book including :

Chapter 1 Getting Started: which includes before you begin, Get Organised

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

I love mince. Every now and then it's nice to treat myself to a nice piece of sirloin steak, but more often than not I eat beef in the form of mince. What's not to love about mince? It's eaten in the nations well-loved dishes such as lasagne, spaghetti bolognose, chilli con carne, burgers and my new favourite Bobotie. But in a new twist on an ingredient favourite, beef mince is used in a classic pizza recipe. The recipe looks a bit involved, with the many ingredients but trust me, you will have this on your table in less than an hour. More importantly, the flavours of the mince topped on the crispy pizza base will make this dish a firm family favourite. So, next time you have a packet of mine and unsure what to use it for than a flavoursome pizza is the way to go.

Here is how my minced beef pizza from All Minced Up:

Minced beef pizza baked

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Tomato base

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Topping on pizza pre bale

Minced beef pizza

Serves 2

Prep time for 20 minutes

Cook time approx 30 minutes

Ingredients

Olive oil, for brushing and drizzling

175g fresh beef mince

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

55g chargrilled red pepper or use any vegetable topping you like.

1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

4 tbsp tomato puree

115 g mozzarella cheese sliced

Salt and pepper

Pizza dough

175g self raising flour, plus extra for dusting

Pinch of salt

25g butter

100-125 ml milk

Method

Preheat the oven to 200c/400F/gas mark 6. Brush a baking sheet with oil. To make the pizza dough, sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Pour in 100 ml of the milk and mix with a round bladed knife to a soft dough, adding the remaining milk if necessary.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently. Roll out to a 25 cm round and transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Push up the edge slightly all around to make a rim.

Put the beef, onion, garlic and cumin in a nonstick frying pan and cook over q medium heat, stirring frequently and breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon, for 5-8 minutes, until evenly browned. Stir in the red pepper and coriander and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Spread the tomato puree over the pizza base. Cover with the beef mixture, top 4th the Mozzarella and drizzle with oil. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minute until the crust is crisp. serve immediately.

Monday, 25 August 2014

I was recently contacted by Serenata Flowers and was asked whether I would like to review a product from their website. After having a good browse on their website, I promptly stated yes. There are many different online retailers that specialise in luxury foodie goodies but often this means a high cost per product, this is not the case for Serenata Flowers. Serenata Flowers specialise in next day delivery of a wide range of flowers such as birthday flowers, summer flowers, occasional flowers and new baby flowers and plants. My personal favourites from their site are the wines, chocolates and hampers which are all perfect for birthdays and the Christmas season such as the 2011 Mannucci Droandi Chianti retaiing at £44.99 (as I love red wine) and also the Bordeaux Gourmet Gift Box retailing at £39.99 as nothing beats cheese and biscuits. As many readers of the blog know, I love chocolates so it was the most sensible decision to review a chocolate hamper so what better way of reviewing the Chocolate Temptations hamper.

Chocolate Temptations

Doesn't the hamper look delicious? The hamper is packed in a sturdy box and each item are delicately presented. The Chocolate Temptations Hamper includes luxury chocolate coated peanuts and raisins which went down well with me and my family, for those who love chocolates and peanuts, it was a double delight as the flavours of both came through in the little morsels of delight.

My favourite item included in the hamper are the luxury Beligian chocolates, each chocolate has a distinctive flavour combination and the white chocolates in particular were my favourites.

The hamper also includes many more delights such as the dark chocolate meringues and other goodies such as the truffles.

I will definitely be purchasing a couple items from this site, especially as I have a couple of birthdays coming up as well as Christmas presents for my foodie friends.

The lovely people at Serenata Flowers are offering one reader from my blog to spend up to £30 on their website on any product they like. If you would like to enter, please follow the instructions on the rafflecopter.

Follow the instructions on the rafflecopter widget.

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Wednesday, 20 August 2014

I love Caribbean inspired sweet dishes, cake and treats. I have fond memories of eating grata cake and regularly sampling my nan's West Indian fruit cake during family holidays. I wanted to create a cake that reminded me of the Caribbean which uses celebrated Caribbean flavours but does not include rum. Not that I'm adverse to rum, I do like it in cakes but I wanted to be light but have a fiery undertone. All the flavours of the Caribbean are found in my cake, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, all spice and coco which creates an tangalistic taste explosion with every bite. I have always been intrigued with the chili and lime combination that is frequently used on cake topping. I can't say this topping is widely eaten in the Caribbean, but chili and lime are certainly Caribbean flavours. Instead of probably doing the home baker thing of making my own butter cream, which I should add, I frequently do this (please see my previous cake posts) I brought a couple of packets of flavoured butter cream from http://www.sugarandcrumbs.co.uk during my visit to Cake International which I have been meaning to use for some time.

This cake is incredibly easy to make, light, fluffy and spicy and even easier to eat. Eat outside whilst we have some sunny days still left with an optional pina colada (see you get the rum somehow) and enjoy.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4. Line two sandwich tins with baking parchment and grease lightly.

In a clean bowl, combine the butter and dark muscovodo sugar until all the sugar is dissolved with a hand held or free standing mixer. Add the spices to the mixture and add a couple of tablespoons or so of flour with one egg at a time; this to ensure the egg does not curdle the mixture. Repeat this process until all the flour is thoroughly combined with the mixture, the mixture will be slightly heavier than a typical sponge; if it needs loosening, add a tbsp of water to the mixture. Equally divide the mixtures in two lined cake tins and bake in the middle shelf for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, remove the cake mixture from the oven and leave to cool on a cake rack. For the topping use one packet of chili and lime butter cream add the butter and make up according to the packet instructions. Top the cake with chocolate sprinkles.

Enjoy

I am sharing my cake to a couple of blogging challenged this month. First up is Jibberjabberuk whose hosts a monthly Love Cake hosting challenge, this month's theme is savoury, which as my cake includes ginger, all spice and chill, I can sneakily enter my cake into this blog hop.

I'm also sharing this recipe to Bake of the week which is a new weekly challenge that I have discovered by the lovely Helen who blogs at Casa Costello. This week, the challenge is guest hosted by Hay in a Day and I'm more than happy to show off my cakey bake.

Thursday, 14 August 2014

I love Caribbean food, it's the food that I grew up on as a child and often with foods of our childhoods, they bring back fond memories. Caribbean food has recently seen a revival in the UK with Levi Roots putting the cuisine on the map, alongside featuring Caribbean flavours on talk shows. Turtle Bay is the first (to my understanding) chain of Caribbean restaurants in the UK, what a welcome this has been throughout cities in the UK. I have visited two of their restaurants in Leicester and also in Birmingham and I hope there is a restaurant soon opening in my local city, Wolverhampton.

Vibrant scenery with Caribbean art work, tasteful Caribbean music. The restaurant in Leicester is somehow superior to the restaurant in Birmingham as there are two floors. The deco is bright, which is perfect for not only not having to squint but also to share beautiful pictures from the restaurant.

Staff are attentive, able to offer choices, friendly a real Caribbean atmosphere.

It was only right that I share the foodie delights from my two visits, and will share more dishes during my next. I definitely feel that if you have not tried authentic Caribbean food, Turtle Bay is the place to go for authentic food and drinks and you will soon fell you are in Jamrock (or Jamaica if you have never heard of the Damian Marley song Welcome to Jamrock).

Let's start with drinks; there is a fabulous deal at present, 241 (£6.85) cocktails during happy hour, first up rum punch, a Caribbean classic, perfect for those who like their cocktails heavily dosed with rum. Another cocktail I tried was a koka colada , a cocktail that must be related to pina calada, creamy and rich this is perfect drink to go with the spicy meals.

Rum punch

Pina Colada

The first visit at Turtle Bay was lunchtime and I went the whole hog, ordering a Caribbean platter (£12.95) for my friend and I. This scrumptious platter includes: jerk chicken wings, pepper roti, sweetcorn fritters and garlic and herb flat breads.

Caribbean Platter

Caribbean platter

All lunchtime menus are a barginous £6.95 and I chose the Jamaican classic, jerk chicken with rice and peas, spicy succulent and tender wings paired with the mellow rice n peas and crunchy slaw. My friend chose pulled pork brioche bun which was served with fries. I'm not sure how authentic this dish was, but it certainly looked appetising.

On my second visit, I ordered the curry, shrimp and mango curry (£9.65) which was a flavour explosion. Th tenderness of the shrimp paired beautifully with the sweetness of the mango and the fiery flavour of the curry. The accompaniment of the rice and peas ensured this was a true Caribbean delight.

As I love food, I mean really love food and vast quantities of it, I love to order side dishes and I'm a fan of sweet plantain (£2.35).

On to desserts or puddings or sweet treats as we may call them: all are a reasonable £4.85. I've tried two puddings from their menu, the rum and raisin pudding and banana and toffee cheesecake. The rum and raisin pudding won,hands down I absolutely adore the rum and raisin pairing, rich, decadent, fruity and sweet this was a pudding that should be crowned as a must try dish.

Sunday, 10 August 2014

Summer is still in the swing of things and haven't we had a wonderful summer this year? I only recently realised how versatile salads are for lunches as I usually associate salads as a side dish. Gone are the days of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber, salads can be exotic and tasty as you like. I really like the idea of sweet and savoury together such as the mango and smoked salmon, it does something to the taste buds, it's like your senses are trying to figure out what flavours are coming through. I also like the fresh lime juice drizzled over salads, I first discovered this in Cuba where I observed the locals topping their salads with lime juice. I made this salad for my lunch and was pleasantly pleased and satisfied. In fact, it has become a regular occurrence for my lunch which makes a change for the usual lunchtime sandwich.
Here is how my salad turned out:

Method
Tip the mango onto a large serving platter or if using whole mangoes, slice the two cheeks off either side of the stone. Cut them in half and then run the knife through the flesh close to the skin to peel it, as you would with a melon. Dice the flesh into bite sized pieces and scatter onto the big serving platter. I like to go back and slice off the remaining shinny bits of mango and do the same thing with them so as not to waste any.
Crumble the feta cheese over. Top and tail the radishes and then slice then as fine as you can get them before scattering them over also.
Cut the avocado in half and discard the stone. Then carefully leek away the skin and slice or dice the avocado and add to the salad.
Season with salt and pepper, drizzle with oil and finish by squeezing the lime juice over.

Wednesday, 6 August 2014

When the lovely people at Waitrose asked me whether I wanted to host a BBQ off, I happily obliged. As much as I am a relatively experienced cook I have never held a barbecue. In fact, I've never flipped over a burger on a barbecue so this challenge was a great experience for me. Also a new thing for me was shopping at Waitrose; many say that this store are expensive but I found the meat offers, three packets of barbecue meats for £10 very reasonable.

There is a superb range of BBQ recipes from the lovely Heston Blumenthal which I used in the barbecue, as you will see from the photographs in the post such as ribs, corn on the cobs and the chosen item for the BBQ off the juicy burger. The idea of the BBQ bake is one dish to be chosen, in this case the burger and a winner is chosen based on how they assemble and top the burger. But before I share the winning burger I had to share that the products that I tried which was served at the BBQ, such as the maderia cake, burgers, bread rolls and sun dried tomatoes is the best rich quality of food I have ever tried in a very long time. This proves there is quality over quantity. My favourite dish from the barbecue was the smokey beef burgers which tasted moist, meaty, tender and were hearty. I certainly would make these burgers again as they incredibly quick to make and were a real crowd pleaser. I'm quite a planner but wanted to keep it relatively simple and easy for me, I loosely based my menu on the following gorgeous dishes.

As part of the BBQ challenge one of my lovely guests had to make their own take on a chosen dish, which in this case was the smokey burger. I chose this delicious looking burger as it was piled high with guacamole, salsa and coleslaw. It also reminded me of my nostalgic trip to Brazil where burgers are sold on the streets with an abundance of toppings and the high and full a burger is, I'm a happy bunny.

Winning burger

Disclaimer: I received vouchers from Waitrose, I was not required to write a positive view. Of course, all opinions are my own.

Sunday, 3 August 2014

Some people associate butter with being full fat, calorofic and unhealthy for you. This book proves disproves many of these myths. Back To Butter: A Tradiitional Foods Cookbook by Molly Chester and Sandy Schrecengost is split into two parts: The Traditional Foods Pantry and Tradirional Food Recipes. The first part of this book gives an educational lesson to fats and oils, unrefined fats such as extra-virgin olive oil, flax oil and ghee - all the fats that are good for you. I was quite surprised that pork and beef lard is considered to healthy as the lard buffer the roller-coaster effect the carbohydrates and sugar have on the body.

But my favourite part of this book is the second part of the chapter, recipes and will share some stand out dishes from each chapter later in the blog post. I decided to make the sticky chicken, using chicken wings and this is by far is the best sticky chicken, i've ever made or tasted and that takes some doing. I've never used butter to make this before but it certainly emnhances the flavour and moistness of the chicken, which I will certainly make again. Another positive of this book is that there are accompanying photographs of the recipes which intices the reader to get into the kitchen and try some healthy fats, alongside some beautiful poctures of the authors farm, who says rearing a self-sufficent farm is boring.

Cheers!, drinks to make include Apricot Lane Farms Lemonade and Beet Kvass.

Here is how my Sticky Chicken turned out:

Sticky chicken.

Butter and syrup.

Butter and syrup melted

Chicken wings pre bake

Sticky chicken wings

Recipe for Sticky Chicken

The author describes this dish as "perfect for a cookout, football game, or casual dinner, it is delicious whether hot right from the oven or sliced cold and stuffed in a sourdough sandwich.

Sticky chicken

1/2 cup (112g) butter

1/2 (120ml) maple syrup

1/2 (88g) Dijon mustard

4 teaspoons curry powder

2 1/2 teaspoons, sea salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

4 bone in chicken breast halve (I used chicken wings)

1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C or gas mark 4). Combine the butter, maple syrup, mustard, curry powder, 2 teaspoons of the sea salt, and the cayenne in a 9 x 13 inch glass baking tin. While the oven is preheating, place the dish in the oven for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the butter fully melt but does not brown.

Remove the pan from the oven and whisk the ingredients to combine. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then liberally dredge each piece of the chicken in the sauce. Gently slide your fingers between the skin and the flesh of the chicken, being careful not to tear the skin and the flesh of the chicken, being careful not to tear the skin. Using a pastry brush, coat both the flesh and the skin thoroughly with sauce. Gently pull the skin back into place.

Arrange the chicken in a single layer in the pan, skin-side up. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 teaspoon sea salt and the pepper.

Bake uncovered for 30 minutes. Remove and baste with the pastry brush using the pan sauces. Bake, uncovered, for an additional 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and preheat the broiler. Bate the chicken one final time, then broil for 2 to 3 minutes, until the chicken skin browns nicely. Be careful not to burn.

Cook for 10 minutes, the place on a serving platter. Whisk the pan juices and pour over the chicken. Serve!

The lovely people at Quarto Group are offering three readers of my blog a copy to win this fabulous book.

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Saturday, 2 August 2014

I'm back :-) I did not intentionally plan on taking a blog break, but my Macbook decided to go into hospital and as such needed to get repaired or replaced. There are now apps where you can blog on your mobile, but I'm not such a big fan so decided to wait for it to fix before sharing posts, plus it was good taking a breather from blogging for two full weeks! Although I have not been blogging, I certainly have been cooking and reviewing. I am looking forward to sharing several giveaways, reviews and even a bbq off in the next coming weeks. At the start of summer we experienced a surge of glorious sunshine which for food lovers means so many things: al fresco dining, feel good foods and natural lighting perfect for all those foodie pictures.

This recipe, Spring garden green tart is everything summer should be: light, refreshing and seasonal. This tart from my go to tart and pastry book, Eric Lanlard's Tart It Up is quick, simple and easy to make, which means one thing: I must make this again.

Here is how my Spring garden green tart turned out:

Serves 6

Preparation time: 20 minutes, plus chilling.

Cooking time: 50 minutes

Ingredients

Butter, for greasing

Plain flour, for dusting

350g shortcrust pastry

200g green asparagus, ends trimmed

70g fresh garden peas

70g fresh broad beans

75 g Greek yoghurt

200 ml double cream

100 ml dry white wine

1 tbsp snipped chives

100g Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

Salt and freshly grounded black pepper

Method

Butter a 26 x 20 cm rectangular tart tin, 3cm deep. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and use it to line the tin.

Lightly prick the base with a fork. Allow to rest in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.

Bring a saucepan of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the asparagus and cook for 5 minutes, or until cooked but still firm. Remove with a slotted spoon and refresh under cold running water. Repeat with the peas, cooking them for 3 minutes, then the broad beans, cooking them for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4.

Beat the eggs in a bowl and add the yogurt, cream, wine and finally the fresh herbs. Beat well to blend, then season with salt and pepper.

Cover the bottom of the pastry case with half of Parmesan and arrange the asparagus, peas and beans over the top in an attractive way. Sprinkle over the rest of the Parmesan. Carefully pour over the egg mixture - it should come right to the top. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until set and nicely golden.